


Faded Heroes

by enthugger



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, mentions of torture, thomas hamilton deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:51:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthugger/pseuds/enthugger
Summary: A story of the loss and rediscovery of Thomas Hamilton.





	Faded Heroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenightpainter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenightpainter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Freedom in the Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/321936) by thenightpainter. 



> This was based on thenightpainter's AMAZING art: [Freedom in the dark](https://thefvckingwarship.tumblr.com/post/164141015550/the-night-painter-freedom-in-the-dark-for#notes) it literally haunts my dreams with how sad and beautiful it is. I was really inspired by the shading around them, it felt like Thomas was fading away and clinging onto James (or the memory of James?) to save him. That's really where this fic came from. If you haven't already GO check out all of their art/writing it's all amazing!

When Aeneas left Carthage, he prepared his fleet secretly, ordering his men to slip away in the dead of night. When Thomas leaves London, he surprises himself by going just as silently. As the men hired by his father push their way into his office, he stands up, sets down his book and brushes off the front of his coat. He listens politely as they speak, as his father speaks, letting his gaze wander out the window to the streets below. 

He wonders where James is, right this second. Not too far from port, Thomas supposes, not too far from the street below, or this very room. He supposes that something as intangible as the wind might be the only thing keeping James from the scene before him, and for that, Thomas is grateful. 

When Dido found out that Aeneas had left, she cursed him and his people for all eternity. Abandoned by her lover, she found no peace in her flourishing city and built her own funeral pyre to burn herself and everything she had left of him. Thomas is led out towards the door, hands clamped like manacles on his shoulders and when he passes Miranda, she looks like she wants to cry. He puts his hand on her arm, leans forward to whisper in her ear, “Take care of each other.” _Hate me if you need to, but do not let either of you come to that end. I couldn’t bare it._ But he doesn’t get a chance to say most of it out loud, because he gets shoved in the back, pushing him down along his own hallway towards the door, the first bruise of many. 

\--

It is not the first time Thomas experiences pain, far from it. Before, there were days when his father’s presence crept up into his mind, like a breath always caught in his throat. And now, when it seems that pain is the only thing he feels, it is almost like he is breathing Alfred Hamilton in the very air around him, in the way that lashes sting and water freezes. And after a while, it feels a little more like poetry, a little less like reason. 

Sometimes the cold reminds Thomas of the Mediterranean, or some distant sea that he has never seen. Odysseus, who was a sailor like James, like the pirates of Nassau, knew how to navigate the rough seas as well as any of their heroes. But Thomas does not know how to sail, he barely even knows how to swim, and if he should fall he is sure he would drown. 

\--

Like armor into battle, Thomas wears James around his shoulders when the nights get too dark. Instead of chains there are gentle fingers, circling his wrists pulling him down into soft sheets. He looks down at the flush beneath James’s freckles, and thinks it must be early on. When James was still unsure of himself, when he tried to cage his passion behind regulation uniforms and clenched fists. And when it still bled through in the glint in his eye and the quirk of his mouth, it warmed Thomas to his very soul. He loves that flush now, as his hands follow it, roam, slowly, luxuriously, with James’ lips at his neck, his collar bone, his chest. He wants to scream at himself to move faster, to devour every inch of this perfect man before he is snatched right out from under him. 

Thomas’s head bangs back against cold stone behind him. His cock is hard. There are tears on his cheeks. And he knows that even James, James who he swore to keep with him like an oath, is tenuous and fading from his mind, and cannot protect him from this war. He knows that when he dies, his Achilles will not be there to mourn and he is not entirely sure whether it hasn’t happened already. 

\--

The first time Thomas breathes air that is not howling with screams and bitter with the stench of blood, he thinks that maybe he has come back to life, that the underworld has chewed him up and spat him out again. 

He stares out at the things he is finally allowed to see: trees, ocean, sky, and he cannot seem to remember how things go in this part. They always gloss over the important bits like how the Trojans laid the foundations to build Rome once they had finally reached the shore. Like how Odysseus remembered how to walk on land after years at sea, or whether the last soldier to lay down his weapon at Troy remembered to leave the city once he had burned it to the ground. 

They push a shovel into his hands, tell him to cover up the scars on his arms and dig his feet into the ground. _Don’t you remember? This is how it feels to be a man._

But Thomas does not remember. He remembers other things, like pages fumbling between his fingers and the copper shine of James’ hair in the morning sun. He remembers all too well the sound of his own screams. 

But he learns. Just as Achilles learned to go to war, Thomas learns the feel of new callouses on once soft palms and an ache in his back. He thinks in times like this, he could almost forget the feeling of hands around his throat. 

\--

Still, there is darkness in the corners of Thomas’ mind, even when he tilts his face up into the sun, it tans his skin and bleaches his hair, but it does nothing to warm his insides. They are cold, drained, and ragged, chained to a wall of stone that he cannot push back up the hill no matter how strong his arms get. 

It’s easier to work with his hands than with his brain. Because when they shake the worst that can happen is a little blood, and what’s a bit more on top of it all. And one day, instead of blood in his arms there is love, come back from the dead in the form of a man who Thomas cannot quite believe is real. But James is there, he is clinging to his shirt and Thomas can feel him shaking in his arms, can smell the sea and lost time as he buries his face in James’s neck. He chokes on the name he whispers into the space between them, an oath he failed to keep. He holds James’s face in his hands and underneath the joy he feels fear, for he knows what comes from breaking oaths. 

But after a while, he realizes that maybe instead of all the monsters in his head, he is Penelope after all, waiting for his love to come home and claim him. 

\--

The darkness dulls with James there, but it doesn’t fade completely. Sometimes, Thomas tries to escape it. He slips outside, sits down on the step in front of their cabin, buries his face in his hands.  
The cicadas are loud, buzzing a new world melody that sounds like screams in Thomas’ ears. The night is warm around him, but he is hunched and shivering, wrapped in his own body heat against a cold that is not there. The door creaks open behind him. 

There are soft footsteps and James sits down next to him on the small step of their cottage, his bare toes curl into the earth. He is careful not to touch, and that inch of space between them seems to Thomas like a gulf a mile wide, like the space between drowning and the man who could jump in to save him. 

“Thomas.” James’ voice is low, gravely with sleep and thinly veiled concern. Thomas does not look up. He barely registers his own name. It is like a memory far away, far in the trees where cicadas sing like nymphs to lure the unwary to their deaths. “I know it’s easiest to be alone in times like these. At least, that’s what I usually want.” Thomas thinks that maybe this is not James’ voice at all, but a trick to get him to plunge his fragile body into the depths, chasing his love’s image. So he clenches his hands, digging dirt-caked nails into his arms and listens in silence. 

“But I find that it helps sometimes, when you’re there. So…” James trails off and from the corner of his eye, Thomas sees him run a hand over his face, scratching gently on his beard. “I’m here.”  
James reaches out and crosses the gulf, plunges his hand into the icy waters between them and Thomas suddenly realizes that his breath is coming in short shallow gasps like he has only just got his head above the waves. And James is gentle, so gentle, as he covers the hand that Thomas has wrapped around his own elbow, tracing soothing patterns with a calloused fingertip. 

When Thomas finally turns to look at him, James’ eyes are dark-rimmed and wide, his brow is furrowed in a way that Thomas hates and he slowly uncurls himself and reaches out, touching the wrinkles with his thumb. “Don’t look so worried, darling.” The first words he has spoken all night sound small and insufficient. 

“Of course I’m worried.” James catches his hand and presses it against his cheek, resting his head against the palm. He is still so careful, being sure not to overstep, not to touch or take any more than Thomas offers. 

Thomas strokes James’s cheek, soft skin to rough beard, and feels like he is floating. Gently bobbing on the current that once dragged him under and he can’t help but be surprised that he is still here at all. He moves closer, crossing the once-gulf of wooden step between them and replaces his hand with his head, leaning forward to tuck his face into James’s neck. 

“I’m sorry. I lose myself sometimes,” his voice is somewhere in James’s collarbone, “Like I lost you.” 

He’s halfway into James’ lap now, clinging to his solid presence and James’ breathing is heavy, like he’s about to start a fight, or about to cry. Thomas feels hands ghosting over his shoulders, his arms, his hair, gentle touches that he can’t seem to remember he deserves. 

James takes a breath, a rise and fall of his chest under Thomas’s cheek, but before he can speak Thomas cuts him off: “Tell me a story?” He is rewarded with a quiet huff of not-quite laughter and James’s hands still, coming to rest around his waist and his shoulders. 

“That was usually your job, but I can try. What would you like to hear about?” 

Thomas sighs, curling in closer, and tilts his head up to answer, “My heroes.”


End file.
